Commercial passenger carriers for transporting passengers to and from various locations may have some form of database for tracking carrier, ticketing and passenger information. This is particularly true for commercial airlines. The information may be provided in a central database, which may be accessible to a ticketing agent at ticketing and check-in areas at airports. Such check-in areas may be remote from gate areas where boarding and disembarking of passengers for the individual flights occurs, however. Thus, this information is may not be available at boarding or gate areas where passengers board and disembark from the passenger carrier. Additionally, the information contained in these databases may not include detailed information regarding the boarding or disembarking of individual passengers, such as whether or not the passenger has actually boarded or disembarked from the passenger carrier.
When traveling upon commercial passenger aircraft, passengers are often provided with boarding passes. These may be issued by the ticketing agent during check-in or they may be provided in advance upon the purchase of the ticket. The boarding pass may be tendered by the passenger at the gate area during boarding operations of the passenger carrier. The boarding pass indicates that the passenger is authorized to board the particular flight or carrier event. Collecting of boarding passes by a gate agent ensures that unauthorized passengers do not board the flight. The gate agent may visually inspect the boarding pass to ensure that the passenger tendering the boarding pass is on the correct flight. After they are collected, the boarding passes also provide a means for monitoring the total number of passengers that may have boarded. The gate agent or overseer may manually count the boarding passes and compare them to the number of boarding passes issued for the flight to determine if all passengers have boarded. If the number of boarding passes issued is greater than the boarding passes collected, the boarding passes may have to be sorted to determine which passenger(s) have not boarded. Such methods can be time consuming and may delay the departure of the flight or carrier event.
Boarding operations have been automated in some cases wherein the boarding passes may be provided with a magnetic stripe that contains information that is read by a magnetic stripe reader. Such readers may be provided with a light and/or audio indication to indicate that the stripe of the boarding pass was read and that indicates that the passenger is authorized to board. Such readers do not, however, provide any detailed information at the gate area other than that the boarding pass is valid for the particular flight or carrier event.